December 15, 2004 - It was just a year ago we were shown the images of Saddam Hussein pulled from his spider-hole. Over and over the shaggy, unkempt boogeyman was prodded and probed for the television cameras. The President announced the capture. A relative had sold him out for the promise of a fistful of Yankee Dollars. With the head cut off the dead-enders and Saddam loyalists would disintegrate and their insurgency would wind down. A year later the killing goes on.

A month ago they told us the Battle of Fallujah ended in a Marine victory. The insurgency had been crushed, deprived of its sanctuary. Fallujah was secured. A month later the bullets fly through the rubble filled streets and the air is rent by the roar of air attacks while the bombs bounce the rubble. Ten more Marines fell in Fallujah this week and car bombs kill at the gate to the Green Zone.

That is the context in which the President awarded three Medals of Freedom. One was hung round the neck of the man who led the CIA as it acquiesced in the distortion of reality that permitted the President to push us into the quagmire in the desert; the Administration’s scapegoat when the light shown on the lying. Tommy Franks stooped to receive another, the hero, whose planning stopped at Baghdad; who gave the President his mission accomplished moment and then bugged out when the flowers wilted. The third went to Paul Bremer whose leadership dismantled Iraq and set the conditions of chaos that has raised the count of heroes to 1302 this morning.

It is fitting for these three more than any others be recognized for their contributions to the first Presidential term of the 21st Century. They combined together each making a significant contribution to sending 1302 Americans, 74 of our British Cousins, a smattering of other members of the coalition and countless Iraqis and other Arabs to enjoy the ultimate Freedom – that of the grave. It is mete and proper that the man who led them in their efforts should reward them with a ribbon and a chunk of gilded base metal. They made their own unique contribution to his legacy.

Yesterday the Old Man of the Pentagon announced that 13,000 more reservists and guardsmen will enter the sandy swamp. 13,000 torn from their families, taken from their jobs and their children, to make Iraq secure. 13,000 more go into the pipeline to replace the dead and maimed to search for the light at the end of the tunnel. 13,000 more and their obsolescent equipment mobilized while the Old Man wakes up to gather his thoughts.

And as they go the President searches for a substitute for Bernie Kerik; someone who can help make the Homeland more secure and less free; someone whose peccadilloes and oversights are less evident; someone to hold the orange and yellow placards for the television cameras and warn America to be afraid. Of such stuff is Freedom made; the sort of Freedom that is twenty years overdue.